This invention relates, in general, to facilitating processing within a computing environment, and in particular, to constructing, parameterizing and deploying data processing flows.
Data flows or data mashups, in which data from one or more sources are combined into a single tool or visualization, have become increasingly popular over the past few years. In addition, there are a number of tools that support the building of data-plus-code mashups, in which data is obtained from one or more sources and further processed by one or more components. Examples of such tools are Yahoo Pipes, offered by Yahoo Inc.; Microsoft Popfly, offered by Microsoft® Corporation; and IBM® Mashup Center, offered by International Business Machines Corporation. Yahoo!® is a registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc.; Microsoft® is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation; and IBM® is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, N.Y. Other names used herein may be registered trademarks, trademarks or product names of International Business Machines Corporation or other companies.
A data-plus-code mashup, also known as a data processing flow, is described as a graph of data sources and black-box processing components. Data is obtained from one or more static or real-time sources, processed using different components, potentially applying complex mathematical or statistical analytics on them, and the results are stored or visualized in different ways. Data processing flows appear in various component based systems, such as Event-Driven Systems, Stream Processing Systems, Service-oriented Systems, Extract-Transform-Load systems and the Grid, as examples.